Yes I do. And that's one of the reasons I was attracted to the Bullet. Endless tinkering.

I found a cap nut for the exhaust pipe PAV air intake at a plumbing store. It's not chrome but it is Copper and it const 1.25. Now I'm off to get some cable clamps so I can change how the luggage rack mounts. Actually, that's after I get finished with cardio-rehab over at the hospital. Damn, this is fun.

Fred, Pure ignorance on my part, but why remove the PAV? To quote Mr. Snidal " the PAV is likely having no adverse effect on engine breathing, simply pulsing some fresh air into the exhaust as it is (unless... it brings about backfiring...during periods of throttle-off coasting". Is there an aesthetic or philosophical angle that i'm missing? Chuck.

No snarkiness on my part inteded with last post. It's just that at some point down the road I will face some of same "upgrade" issues. I don't want to do unnessessary work only to risk failing a yearly emmissions inspection.

I think Mr Snidal is probably right Chuck. I believe there were some initial problems with it overheating the exhaust valves, but I never really found anything concrete about it. I think most people remove it to simplify things, same with the CAT in the exhaust pipe. The PAV also tends to "chuff" when you're riding down the road instead of "putt,putt" like its supposed to! Its on my to-do list.

We don't have emission checks in Michigan, so we're free to tinker and remove.

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2007 Military. It needs some company now the Suzuki has left the stable..........

Yeah Bandit, I haven't actually checked but it's an annual chore for cars here (10 years old or newer I believe). So I just assume... The idea of cutting the bike to it's functional bone IS nice however. Chuck

Fred, Pure ignorance on my part, but why remove the PAV? To quote Mr. Snidal " the PAV is likely having no adverse effect on engine breathing, simply pulsing some fresh air into the exhaust as it is (unless... it brings about backfiring...during periods of throttle-off coasting". Is there an aesthetic or philosophical angle that i'm missing? Chuck.

Snidal may be correct. But from my point of view, the PAV is powered by vacuum from the intake manifold. That means it is a potential source of vacuum leak which may result in reduced performance. Also, all I want happening in the intake manifold and the carb is for a pure pressure differential to exist between the cylinder and the air filter. I don't want anything else going on in there like using vacuum to power an air pump that I have no use for.

I am fortunate in that we have no emmisions test to worry about. If I did have to pass an emmisions test every year, I would have left the PAV alone.

So, no there isn't any aesthetic or philosophical thing about this. For me it's just junk hung on the engine that doesn't belong there, IMO.

BTW, I pulled the tube out of the intake manifold and filled it with JB Weld. Not gonna leak from there.

This Bullet is the first bike I have ever lightened by way of removing the PAV and replacing the heavy original exhaust system with a lighter one and such things. Normally I'm adding toys to my sports tourers like electronic speedo correctors, heated grips, hazard flasher kits, etc etcGetting back to basics etc?

I have read the recent posts with interest, since they jell with my thoughts on how to both simplify the bike and to allow the engine to breathe in and out as easily as it can keeping in mind just two constraints - keeping the dust in the air from getting into the engine, and keeping the noise of the exhaust to a civilized level considering the fact that I do not live all by myself. Also, I would be ok to rejet the carb to take care of the higher volume of air that would then move through the system. Which brings me to the final constraint I would like to impose on my tinkering - by doing all of the above, I should not end up exposing a weak link in the system somewhere else that I then have to fix, because that is then an endless road to more tinkering and less riding. I would prefer to then keep the tinkering to keeping everything about the bike in a perfect state of tune. Just my personal philosophy of course, room in the world for as many philosophies as there are Bulleteers!I have two bikes now - an AVL 500 engine one and cast iron 350. Does anyone in the forum have a recommended list of things that I should fix and how, given the above? Probably be different for each bike, I would appreciate any inputs.Both the bikes are from recent RE production, so I am pretty sure that they both have all the emission and noise control stuff clogging up the works.Living in India, I know that anything I do, for the amount of riding I will do, will have no impact on the pollution levels, and I am always careful about how/where I fire up the bike when the rest of the world is sleeping!!

I have already done to my Bullet pretty much what you are describing. As you can tell the PAV is off and the orifices on the bike are capped off. The converter is out of the header pipe but the stock muffler is still in place.

I have yet to replace the air filter or modify it in any way, but I probably will before long. I just don't want to give up that fine looking chrome box. I have up jetted the pilot one step and the same for the main jet. When the stock air filter leaves, I will need to revisit the tuning.

My attitude about this is simply to put the bike back in the condition it was designed to be in before the government decided they knew better than the engine designers.

I understand and respect your concern about exposing a weak link in the system by doing things to improve performance. My humble opinion, based on very little time with my Bullet is, if you do what it sounds like you want to do - you're bikes will be running as they were originally intended. So I think the danger of having those mild modifications cause the weak link in the 'chain' to break is almost nonexistent.

I don't think these engines will respond well to being ridden hard all the time, but I do think they are pretty tough, low output units. I think these engines will deliver the performance they were designed for, for many years.

All of what you have written in your most recent post, describes my thinking better than what I could have written it, would be the modest, politically correct thing to say, if I had not posted on similar lines somewhere here a couple of months ago!With that beating my trumpet out of the way, can you share with me the exact details of all that you have done so far, in a message to me, since the rest of the folks may not want to wade through all of that? I plan to do my tinkering once the bikes have run in and settled down well, so that by that time I will also have gotten to know them a lot better, so I have some time before I start. I would also look to hearing from you the order in which you are restoring the bike to be the way its designers intended it to be, to learn from what you have done/plan to do. Getting my bikes in the state that their Gods intended them to be and then keeping them just so, is my plan for them as long as I am able to enjoy riding them. To also leave enough time, money and energy for the latter part in a country that has riding weather 300 days in a year!Now for my dumb question - about the PAV unit. If this sits in the path of a vacuum induced fresh air flow into the combustion chamber, in principle how can it reduce emissions at the other end? Unless it does this by basically getting a 500 cc engine to run like a 350, in which case the greener thing to do is buying a 350 in the first place? That is what this seems to me, at a fundamental common sense level. On the other hand, I did say up front that this is a dumb question,,,,!!

As soon as I posted my latest and reread some of the preceding posts, I realized what was dumb about the question - so let me ask another - is it that the PAV diverts some of the vaccuum induced airflow and diverts that into the exhaust side to clean up whats coming out of that? If so, is clean up the right word, or is dilute the better word? And if that is the case, isn't it some kind of a con at a fundamental level? Or am I still being stupid here, as is most likely?!

The secret to solving pollution is dilution........thats all the PAV does. Injects clean air into an exhaust. Maybe you get additional hydrocarbon burn off as well, but the real key is just getting more clean air in the exhaust. Is it a con? Probably, but it passed the test.

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2007 Military. It needs some company now the Suzuki has left the stable..........